WASHINGTON, Jan 16: President George W. Bush has condemned the “positive discrimination” policy of the University of Michigan which allows it to accommodate minority students.

Bush administration Thursday decided to challenge the policy’s constitutionality in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court hears the case in March.

The university’s affirmative-action policy is one of the most-watched issues before the high court this year and could yield the court’s most important statement on the use of racial preferences in a quarter-century.

Bush said quota systems are divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution.

I strongly support diversity of all kinds, including racial diversity, the president said, but the method used by University of Michigan to achieve this important goal is fundamentally flawed.

Bush’s six-minute address from the Roosevelt Room, after which he took no questions from reporters, followed a statement Wednesday from presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, who said race-dependent policies do not serve to lift up our country and to help the average American.

Behind the scenes, Bush and his advisers discussed how to press their arguments against the university’s programme, administration officials said on condition of anonymity.

Bush’s move drew strong criticism from Rev. Jesse Jackson and other Democrats. The veteran civil rights activist, speaking with MSNBC’s Lester Holt after the Bush address, said it was unfair, dishonest and a distortion to call the university’s policy a quota programme. Jackson said the president’s logic is flawed and inaccurate, and that Bush has made a very calculated political decision, no less on Dr. King’s birthday, to put forth an extreme civil-rights position.

Jackson told The Associated Press that Bush was intentionally flaming racial fears for wedge politics.

Bush got into Yale University in part because the school gives credit to the sons of alumni, Jackson said, comparing that advantage to the University of Michigan point system denounced by Bush.

The Bush administration continues a disturbing pattern of using the rhetoric of diversity as a substitute for real progress on a civil rights agenda, said Senator John Kerry, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bush said that some students at the university are selected or rejected on the basis of the colour of their skin. The motivation for this administration policy may be very good, but the result is discrimination, he said.